I agree with you that suicide is not the answer, and disagree with almost everything else you said there. Especially the last sentence. For a lot of these people "being yourself" is being sad, depressed, anxious, and having difficulty coping with day-to-day life and finding a way out of how they're feeling. Nobody likes feeling depressed and it never sits well with me when people say to just go out and enjoy life, because that is usually not the answer to other peoples problems when they're dealing with mental illness. If somebody said that to me (and they have) when I've been in a down-state I would not be pleased with that answer because it's at worst treating the symptoms and illness as more of a choice than the mental condition that is and at best showing a lack of understanding of the thought processes of a depressed person.
I take this topic very, and I do mean, very, personally. From the idiocy of how its handled by most general practitioners, and psychiatrists - it pisses me off. Take a child for instance, age 2. Depression isn't there. There is though, laughter, and the natural course of that age period. Depression eh? Of all the crap we do to our bodies, what else can we expect, properly balanced hormones? Neurotransmitters? Heck no! Yes, certain things can make us feel bad, very bad even, and those are usually people who haven't had the proper nurturing as children.
Neither is any emotional complexity or higher mode of thought. And violent, histrionic tantrums. Our bodies weren't designed for anything. Cooked food, antibiotics, organ transplants, blood transfusions, survival in Northern Europe. But we make do anyway. Bodies are really a pretty stupid system. Insert fat, sugar and protein, create energy, don't die. So you can put things like MSG into them and your liver and kidneys just toss them out. Sometimes there are bad things you could put in there but we have people to test those. We call them scientists. That's why we don't have the epidemic levels of suicidal depression that you would expect if you were right about anything here in the slightest. You have a lot of anecdotes and appeals to emotion, I'll give you that, but not so much in the way of useful information.Take a child for instance, age 2. Depression isn't there.
There is though, laughter,
Junk, artificials, preservatives. Were our bodies designed for it? No.
Hmm, I wasn't detailed again. Suffered from depression since the age of 14. A few suicide attempts, and emergency room visits. Different anti depressants, shrinks, and doctors. Entered a stage of severe depression at 18, stayed with it for a long time. Studied alternative medicine, preventative medicine, tried a lot of things. Figured it out though. No longer have a problem, considering almost half my life was either regularly depressed, to severe.
We've had some similar experience but very different outlook on this then, and there's nothing wrong with that I don't think. Sorry if I came out on the offensive on this, it's a topic I have some strong feelings about, as do you.